Bush's Approval Of F-15 Sales To Saudis Likely To Help Pratt Workers

WASHINGTON — President Bush announced Friday during a campaign stop in Missouri that he will allow the sale of 72 F-15 fighter airplanes to Saudi Arabia.

Thousands of aerospace workers, including about 1,200 Pratt & Whitney workers in Connecticut, are likely to see their jobs extended for several more years if the sale goes through.

"I am certain it is in the interest of world peace," Bush told cheering defense workers in Missouri as he announced his proposal for the $9 billion sale.

But critics say the decision, coming after months of delays, smacks of election year politics and threatens the balance of power in the Middle East.

The proposal was hailed by companies such as Pratt & Whitney, which manufactures the F-15 engines in Connecticut.

It is the latest in a series of efforts by Bush in the past few weeks to pump up American workers threatened by budget cuts and the ailing economy. It is the second warplane sale in 10 days that Bush has proposed. The first, a sale of F-16s to Taiwan, also will benefit Pratt, which will make the engines.

Pratt makes all of the engines for the U.S. Air Force's F-15s and is hoping to win the contracts for all 165 jet engines and spares to power the Saudis' F-15s. The contract would be worth about $600 million to the company.

However, the proposed sale, if approved by Congress, may only soften the blow of impending layoffs at Pratt. Bush's decision came as rumors spread through the company about layoffs by the middle of next week, particularly among salaried workers. It is expected that more than 100 white collar-workers, from engineers to communications department employees, will get pink slips.

And the fighter sales hold some political risk for Bush. Although it could help Bush in sections of the country where it will bolster the local economies, it also could undermine Bush's support among voters worried about potential threats to the

security of Israel and fearful about unchecked arms proliferation around the world.

"The White House claims that this sale will promote jobs and peace. They are wrong on both counts," said Greg Bischak, an economist who heads the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament, a Washington think tank that is urging more attention to new product lines for defense companies.

The Israeli government began signaling last week that even though it was not happy about the sale, it would not mount a strong campaign to thwart it.

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton said he would assess the sale proposal further before deciding whether to endorse it.

The Saudis, he said, are an important Middle East partner to the United States, but he said he wanted to be certain that Israel would retain military superiority in the region before he decides whether to back the sale.

For companies such as Pratt, the F-15 sale could ease some financial pressures, even though the full production will not gear up until 1994 or 1995. Fighter engine deliveries to Saudi Arabia and to Taiwan are expected to begin around 1994 and continue for three years at the rate of nearly 90 engines a year, said Mark A. Bobbi, an aviation analyst with Forecast International in Newtown.

Although the Saudi sale will probably use Pratt engines, it is still not a done deal for the company. The engine choice will be up to the Saudis, and General Electric's Aircraft Engine division in Evendale, Ohio, plans to compete for the F-15 contracts. Spokeswoman Karen Purdy said that GE plans to mount an aggressive sales campaign with the Saudi government.

At Pratt Friday, the company was not giving out numbers or timetables about possible layoffs, but salaried workers speaking on condition of anonymity said a layoff was expected next week. Some had circled Monday on their calendars, while others said they expected to be notified Wednesday.

The company, Connecticut's largest private employer, said in January that it planned to eliminate about 5,000 jobs by 1995 as part of a larger restructuring of its parent company, Hartford's United Technologies Corp.

Last month, responding to the continuing slump in its military and civilian markets, the East Hartford-based jet engine builder announced an accelerated cost reduction plan that could lead to deeper cuts.

Pratt spokeswoman Peg Ford confirmed there will be further layoffs this year. But she said the company's supervisors are "still going through their analysis department by department and plant by plant to determine what cost reduction activities we can put into effect."

So far this year, Pratt has laid off about 600 hourly workers and 35 salaried workers. The company now employs slightly more than 22,200 workers in East Hartford, Middletown, Southington, North Haven and elsewhere in Connecticut.